The Negev fortress of Masada, best known as one of the last holdouts of Jewish rebels against the Roman empire in 70 CE, was built in the 2nd or early 1st century BCE by the kings of the Hasmonean dynasty. When it was excavated in the 20th century, archaeologists found a number of ancient religious scrolls that have helped historians better understand the evolution of Judaism and the text of the Hebrew Bible itself, as Lawrence Schiffman explains:

In all, parts (often small fragments) of fifteen biblical and apocryphal scrolls were found in the Masada excavations, including fragments of two scrolls of Leviticus, one each of Deuteronomy and Ezekiel, and two manuscripts of the Psalms. Because, in general, these texts are almost identical to the Masoretic text—the one used in Jewish editions of the Bible today—we can conclude that this text had become the only recognized version of the Hebrew Bible by the period of the revolt. Only a century or so earlier, the Dead Sea Scrolls, while including what scholars term proto-Masoretic texts in large numbers, also exhibited manuscripts demonstrating that the biblical text was not fully fixed.

Yet the Jews who fled to Masada [during the revolt against Rome], whose biblical texts had by this time become standardized, also made use of apocryphal books, a practice later frowned upon by the early rabbis.

Some of these texts, previously found only among the Dead Sea Scrolls, were discovered at Masada as well, leading scholars to conclude that they were not specific to the Jewish sect at Qumran, to whom the Dead Sea Scrolls belonged, but were in fact commonplace in Judea at the time:

If so, we can now understand why ideas reflected in these texts appeared in rabbinic literature and in the Jewish mysticism of the 3rd through 8th centuries CE. . . . The presence of these texts at both Judean Desert sites shows that in this period the Jewish people shared a common heritage of apocryphal literature. Although the rabbis would later try to root out these non-biblical texts, during Second Temple times these books still enjoyed considerable popularity, which is why they make up approximately one-third of the Qumran collection and why some were also found at Masada.

Yasir Arafat was often quoted as saying that his “strongest weapon is the womb of an Arab woman.” That is, he believed the high birthrates of both Palestinians and Arab Israelis ensured that Jews would eventually be a minority in the Land of Israel, at which point Arabs could call for a binational state and get an Arab one. Using similar logic, both Israelis and their self-styled sympathizers have made the case for territorial concessions to prevent such an eventuality. Yet, Yoram Ettinger argues, the statistics have year after year told a different story:

Contrary to the projections of the demographic establishment at the end of the 19th century and during the 1940s, Israel’s Jewish fertility rate is higher than those of all Muslim countries other than Iraq and the sub-Saharan Muslim countries. Based on the latest data, the Jewish fertility rate of 3.13 births per woman is higher than the 2.85 Arab rate (since 2016) and the 3.01 Arab-Muslim fertility rate (since 2020).

The Westernization of Arab demography is a product of ongoing urbanization and modernization, with an increase in the number of women enrolling in higher education and increased use of contraceptives. Far from facing a “demographic time bomb” in Judea and Samaria, the Jewish state enjoys a robust demographic tailwind, aided by immigration.

However, the demographic and policy-making establishment persists in echoing official Palestinian figures without auditing them, ignoring a 100-percent artificial inflation of those population numbers. This inflation is accomplished via the inclusion of overseas residents, double-counting Jerusalem Arabs and Israeli Arabs married to Arabs living in Judea and Samaria, an inflated birth rate, and deflated death rate.

The U.S. should derive much satisfaction from Israel’s demographic viability and therefore, Israel’s enhanced posture of deterrence, which is America’s top force- and dollar-multiplier in the Middle East and beyond.